1. Technical Field
This invention relates to user collaboration systems. In particular, this invention relates to a flexible and independent collaboration system between users having particular skill sets.
2. Related Art
Rapid advances in data processing and telecommunications technology have lead to a vast array of communication services available to the consumer. Such telecommunication services include traditional telephone service, Internet service, cable television service, cellular phone service, paging service, combined voice and data delivery service, and many other services.
Similarly, advances in data processing and telecommunications technology have lead to multinational organizations with employees located across the world. FIG. 1 shows an exemplary distribution 100 of communities 102, 104, and 106 within a particular organization. As used herein, a community may include one or more users having a particular skill set, such as subject matter expertise in a particular area, or it may include one or more users that belong to a particular group. For example, a telecommunications organization may include a community for users having expertise relating to a particular administrative form used to establish new customer accounts. As another example, a medical organization may include a community of cardiologists. Virtually any criteria may be used for determining a community.
As shown in FIG. 1, a particular organization may encompass one or more locations, which may be physically located in the same area or may be physically separated. For example, an organization may include an office of the Director location 110, a remote office location 112, a technical support center location 114, a customer service center location 116, a warehouse location 118, and other locations 120. Each location may include one or more users that belong to different communities, such as community 1 102, community 2 104, and community 3 106. In one example, community 1 102 may include a user at the office of the Director location 110, two users at the remote office location 112, a user at the technical support center location 114, and two users at other locations 120.
As a result of the plethora of product and service offerings, not to mention the distribution of skill sets across an organization, users such as customer service representatives may not be able to service every request of a different member. For example, a user may call a customer service center to establish a new account or receive technical information. Typically, the call is placed in a queue until a customer service representative is available. If the customer service representative is unable to answer a particular user's question, the caller is transferred to a different department where the caller is placed into a second queue to await a representative from the second department.
This process may continue until the caller is finally connected to an individual can answer the question. For example, assume a caller desires to establish a new account. The representative may collect information from the caller to establish the new account. If the representative is unable to complete the process for any reason, such as the inability to compete even a single question on a form, the caller may need to be transferred. The second representative may be required to collect the same information as the first representative.
Throughout this process, the caller is utilizing valuable network resources. Simultaneously, additional users may also be calling for help. These callers may be forced to wait in the queue until the first caller's issue is resolved, compounding the load on network resources. In short, call centers experience the technical problem of wasted network resources.
In an attempt to address this technical problem, knowledge management portals have been created that contain information relating to the universe of an organization's business. A customer service representative may access a knowledge management portal when faced with a difficult question in order to find a solution. While knowledge management portals may be effective, they still suffer from inherent problems. First, a customer service representative must find the relevant information within the portal. Second, even if the representative finds the relevant information, lack of experience in the particular area may prevent the representative from recognizing the answer quickly. In some instances, the representative's lack of experience in the particular area may prevent them from finding the answer even if it may be found in knowledge management portal. As a result, network resources are still wasted by the inefficient sharing of corporate knowledge.
Accordingly, a need has long existed for an improved user collaboration system that allows an organization to more efficiently utilize its network resources.